


The Fifth Movement

by attheborder



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Band Fic, F/M, Gen, Jewish Character, M/M, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, angie is a blatant self-insert sorry, more ships and characters to come in later chapters but i don't wanna spoil ya!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18599779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “Ladies and gentlemen, our next act is a brand new band made up of students from our host venue, Crestwood High. This is their first performance, but they’re gonna kill it. Please give it up for…The Fifth Movement!”It’s only a high school battle of the bands, but it might as well be Radio City Music Hall for how hard Angie’s heart is pounding as she takes center stage.__(The Crestwood kids start a band and go on tour.)





	The Fifth Movement

“Hey, you guys are on deck.”

“Shit. Shit shit shit,” Angie murmurs, as the PA disappears from the doorway with a nod.   

They are sitting in the makeshift green room of the Crestwood High auditorium, which is really just the theater teacher’s office with some of the tables pushed to the sides and a ratty old couch dragged in from who knows where. French’s lanky body is occupying almost the whole of the couch, draped across it with his guitar on his stomach, engaged in a last-ditch riff rehearsal. Shoved all the way to the side, practically sitting on French’s feet, is Buck, who has his drumsticks in hand and is thwacking them against the arm of the couch in frantic paradiddles.

Jesse is pacing the room, hands shoved in his hoodie pockets. From the rolly chair she’d appropriated from behind the teacher’s desk, Angie watches him weave in and around various furniture objects.

“Dude, would you sit the fuck down? You’re making me nervous,” Steve says. He’s leaning against the far wall, mirroring the position of his black Stratocaster, which is propped up precariously, uncut string-ends curling down from the headstock.

“I’m gonna forget all my parts,” Jesse moans. “I’m gonna fuck up, I know it.”

“You’re not,” says Angie, not sure if she believes it.

“Just keep in time, that’s what matters,” says Buck.

“You’re the hot one, you’re Stu Sutcliffe, doesn’t matter if you can actually play,” says French.

Jesse turns a corner and bears down on the couch, leaning threateningly above the supine rhythm guitarist. “That is not helping, _”_ he growls.

“Calling you hot doesn’t help at all?” Buck giggles.

“Okay. Maybe a little. Thank you. I guess,” says Jesse, straightening up.

“Seriously, you’ll be fine,” Angie says to Jesse, and then gets up preemptively from her chair, kicking it behind her dramatically as she turns to face the group. “We’ll all be fine. In fact, we’ll be more than fine. We’re gonna fucking slay out there.”

“True that!” says French, forcing a confidence Angie doubts he actually has.

The PA is back now, popping his head into the doorway. “Alright y’all, it’s your time to shine.”

Angie battles back a full-body shiver of anxiety as she heads for the exit. “Guys. Get up. Get your shit together. We’re gonna do this. And we’re gonna _win.”_

The boys follow her lead as she strides out the door; instruments in hand, they approach the stage door to the auditorium across the hall. The PA goes in ahead of them, giving a hand signal to someone unseen, and from behind Angie watches the event’s host stepping on stage, microphone in hand, to announce their arrival.

“Ladies and gentlemen, our next act is a brand new band made up of students from our host venue, Crestwood High. This is their first performance, but they’re gonna kill it. Please give it up for… _The Fifth Movement!”_

It’s only a high school battle of the bands, but it might as well be Radio City Music Hall for how hard Angie’s heart is pounding as she takes center stage, in front of the mic stand set up in precise accordance with the stage plot they’d submitted last week.

Three songs. Twelve minute time limit before they’re kicked off stage to make way for the next band. Three judges in the back, arms folded, one of whom is none other than Derek Combs, the famous Detroit producer whose precious studio time is the prize for the winner of today’s event.

And at least a hundred people in the crowd, standing, waiting.

Angie shoots a glance behind her, sees Buck taking up his place behind the kit. To her left, Jesse plugging into the backlined Ampeg; French crouched down, messing with his pedalboard. To her right, Steve is tuning up, but as if he can feel her eyes on him he looks up at her, meets her gaze. She’s nervous and he doesn’t bother to smile at her because he’s nervous too, she can tell, but she feels the steady pulse of his belief in her radiating from him anyway and it fills her with an easy calm.

They all straighten up, turn back to Buck, seeing if he’s ready— and he is. A quick nod, Buck slams his drumsticks together— “One, two, three, four!” and they’re off, launching into “Underground.” French rips into the jagged chords of the eight-bar intro and Steve’s lead riff squeals above it, and then Angie steps to the mic, takes a deep breath, and begins the first verse:

  

> _“I hear you through the glass_
> 
> _I don’t know how long I’ll last_
> 
> _Our spirits hold against the years_
> 
> _No matter how they pass—”_

This is it. They’re really playing. They’re really a _band_. Angie takes the mic from the stand and tries to move with the song, as they reach the prechorus. Jesse is jumping up and down as he picks out the frantic bassline; French is swaying, back and forth, cranking out power chords.

Into the chorus now, and Angie belts the worlds with all of her heart, as though this is a song she’s known all her life and not one written a month ago, almost as a joke, based on a weird dream she had, with no expectation it would ever be performed:

 

> _“Break down the bones of our keeper_
> 
> _Make sure that I’ll get to see you again_
> 
> _Break down, am I a believer_
> 
> _Hold tight, and I’ll see you at the end—”_

She’s breathing hard as they come out of the chorus into the guitar solo, Steve stepping up to the lip of the stage like the true rockstar he is and, yes, _slaying_ it, his fingers flying across the fretboard and the notes flowing forth with ease.

The last verse and then it’s back to the chorus, and then here’s a bit they’d practiced a million times to get it right, this little dropout into the outro, back in on the 2— they _hit_ it like professionals, Jesse’s low-end quarter notes locking back in perfectly with Buck’s kick drum. Angie is giving it everything she’s got for the final refrain:

> _“We’ll come up from underground_
> 
> _We’ll come up from underground—”_

They finish with a repeat of the chorus and then an instrumental flourish, a stomp, a jump into completion. The moment hangs in the air, suspended, in an eerie silence that feels like it lasts a decade, and Angie thinks: _Oh god. We sucked. They think we sucked, they’re not going to clap, the boos are about to start—_

But a roar of applause hits her ears then like a tidal wave, and to her adrenaline-wracked senses it might as well be from a crowd of a thousand instead of a hundred. Wild-eyed, she glances to her bandmates, sees her own expression of incredulity mirrored on their faces.

“Thank you,” French says, leaning forward into his mic. “That one was called ‘Underground.’”

Angie, taking her cue, announces: “This next song is ‘For You Only.’” And as Buck counts the song in and the crash of guitars roar back to life, she looks at Steve, his cheeks flushed, strumming and bouncing on the balls of his feet, and she lets her emotions overtake her as she sings, for him, about him, to him:

> _“Draw me a picture_
> 
> _Only I can understand_
> 
> _One about the day we met_
> 
> _How you thought I was all that—”_

They’ve practiced this one a little less than “Underground” and Angie wonders if the audience can tell. She tries not to wince when she hears Jesse miss a few notes; doesn’t let a skipped beat from Buck interrupt her graceful dart around the stage during the chorus:

> _“What did you see in me?_
> 
> _When I was nothing, when I had nothing to say_
> 
> _But you heard me anyway—”_

This one finishes with a gentle ring out of the last chord, and as it fades out the applause fades back in. Angie is somehow surprised, as if she’d assumed they’d used up all their audience goodwill on the first song. But no, somehow, miraculously, the Fifth Movement have remained in favor.

“Thank you so much,” Angie finds herself saying to the crowd. She knows they have to keep it short, they have one last song and four minutes left in their slot, but she can’t _not_ make a tiny little speech, it might be going to her head just a little bit, the thought that she can just _talk_ and the people standing in front of her have no choice but to _listen._ “We’re called the Fifth Movement, we all met right here at Crestwood High, and we are so excited to be playing for you guys today. Honestly I never thought I’d be able to find people who liked me enough to play my songs with me… but I did, and they’re right here, and I still kind of don’t believe it…”

From out of the corner of her eye, Angie glimpses movement, turns— French is waving frantically, a distinct “wrap it up” motion. Jeez, what a stickler. _She_ certainly doesn’t care if they go overtime, it’d actually kind of be pretty cool if they got physically dragged off stage, or their sound got cut or something— very punk. But she capitulates, purely in the interest of professionalism.

“We’ve got one last song. You probably know this one, so please sing along…”

And with a viscerally satisfying slam of drums and guitar, they launch straight into Paramore’s “That’s What You Get.”

***

Herded offstage by the PA, the band drops their instruments back off in the green room and then re-enters the auditorium again through the front doors to watch the next band.

They line up against the back wall, just a few feet away from the judges’ area. Steve nudges Angie, points to Derek Combs, who is annotating the paper program with an expensive-looking pen.  

“What do you think he’s writing down?”

Angie mocks a pensive pose. “Let’s see, probably… Shit band, singer sounded like a dying goat, nobody could keep time, everyone sucked, except for the lead guitarist, who _totally s_ hredded and had great tone.”

Steve punches her in the shoulder. “Hey, come on. You sounded great!”

Angie shakes her head ambivalently. “You’re just saying that because—”

Steve turns to his other side, slaps Jesse on the shoulder. “Jesse, did she sound great or what? Gimme some backup here,” he says.

“What?” Jesse jerks to attention. He’d been zoning out, staring at the floor and fiddling with the string of his hoodie. “Oh, uh—”

Angie looks at him expectantly.

“Yeah… yeah, Angie, you sounded awesome,” he mumbles, weakly. Angie rolls her eyes at Steve at this display of backboneless camaraderie from his best bro.

Up on the stage, the host is back. He announces with over-the-top enthusiasm the next band, an experienced act from West Bloomfield High called Shark Off.

Jesse waves a hand to shush French and Buck, who had been discussing something or other with rapidly rising volume off to the side. “Guys, shhhhhh. Next band is up.”

Buck says, “So? They suck.”

“We’re standing right next to the judges, we better shut up,” French points out, lowering his voice. “Don’t want to lose out on the big prize for being loudmouths during the other acts.”

“Even if they suck. Got it,” Buck says. He shoots French a mischievous grin.

Angie is pretty sure that Shark Off does _not_ suck, and in fact would most likely be classified as “good” by any objective observer with an understanding of the basic critical criteria for live music. The band after Shark Off is good too, and though Angie didn’t get to see the first band that played because her own group was too busy goofing off in the green room and failing to relieve their nerves, she has an idea that they were probably pretty good too. So, if she has her numbers straight, that would make four bands total, three of which were good and one of which is _her_ band, goodness TBD.

There is a really awful stand-up comedy set during the judging period, courtesy of a classmate of theirs named Roger. Angie is pretty much the edgiest person she knows and even _she_ cringes at some off-color material about school shootings. So she tunes out and shoots the shit with her bandmates, huddled together like penguins in the cold of Antarctica at the back of the auditorium. By this point the other bands have gathered in the back as well, and Angie plays one of her favorite games with Steve.

“I bet that guy’s favorite Juul flavor is mango,” she giggles, pointing out the lead singer of Shark Off to Steve.

“Doesn’t that chick look like a mashup of Kylie Jenner and a chihuahua?” Steve says, motioning to the drummer of the third band.

They go back and forth like this a few times until the “comedy” thankfully, finally ends. Jesse urgently tugs Steve’s sleeve, alerting him to the host taking the stage again, an auspicious piece of paper in his hand. Steve in turn taps Angie and they all turn back to the stage, watching the judges file on next to the host.

The host hands the microphone to the first judge, Principal Gilchrist.

“It’s been an honor to host the annual battle of the bands here at Crestwood High,” he says, sounding smarmy as ever, and goes on for way too long about the importance of arts programs in public schools.

Next is the second judge, a critic from the Detroit Free Press. She commends all the bands for their talent and effort, and says she thinks they’ll _all_ be successful and she hopes to be writing album reviews for them for years to come.

“Ugh, c’mon,” mutters Jesse, his leg jittering up and down.

Finally, the mic passes to Derek Combs. He’s wearing sunglasses indoors, which fits pretty precisely Angie’s idea of what a music producer should be like.

“Great job, y’all,” he says. “When I was in a band in high school we sounded like ass. And look where I am now.”

Steve leans into Angie, whispers: “Is that... supposed to be a compliment?”

Combs continues: “Anyway, congratulations to all of you for having the guts to get up there on stage and play. At the end of day— studio time doesn’t matter, album reviews don’t matter, even school doesn’t matter. All you really gotta figure out is how to find the time and the strength to come together with other people and _make music happen._ ”

Angie finds herself nodding, agreeing with this sage wisdom.

“He’s like, rock and roll Dumbledore,” Buck whispers.

Combs passes the mic back to the host, who thanks the judges and the bands, and then unfolds his piece of paper.

“This is it,” Angie breathes, and she grabs hold of Steve’s hand in hers. Her heart is pounding, harder even than it did when she was onstage.

Jesse has his hoodie up, expression inscrutable, leg still jittering. French is biting his lip, standing shoulder to shoulder with Buck, who is wringing his hands.

“And the winner of the 8th Annual Northwest Suburban Battle Of The Bands is…”

Steve is squeezing Angie’s hand so hard, she can feel his pulse through his skin. Their heartbeats line up like the bass and the kick.

“... _The Fifth Movement!_ Congratulations, guys, you’ll be heading into the studio with Derek Combs at his Together Sound studio to record your first single!”

Like confetti out of a pep rally cannon, the five bandmates rocket into the air, shrieking, hugging each other, amidst the din of the applause and the conciliatory murmurs of the other three bands around them.

Angie pulls Steve in for a quick kiss; then he wraps his left arm around her and pulls Jesse in with his right. French and Buck come around the side and it’s one big group embrace, Angie hears someone crying and then realizes it’s _her,_ she’s embarrassed by the hot tears running down her face and steps back from the group to wipe them away before they fuck up her mascara. She makes eye contact with Jesse, who looks practically shell-shocked, his eyes wide in disbelief, his mouth open as if he were about to protest the situation, about to say _there’s been some kind of a mistake, this can’t be right._ She takes him by the shoulders and gives him a good shake.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Angie says, “and don’t give me some bullshit about how you didn’t help at all, I swear to god, Jesse. I _saw_ how much you practiced. I _know_ how much—”

She doesn’t manage to get the rest of her sentence out before Jesse is suddenly pressing himself to her in a deep hug. Directly in front of her, behind Jesse, Angie sees Steve, sees Steve seeing Jesse hugging her, there is an expression on his face that she doesn’t have time to interpret before it changes back to the look of pride and accomplishment befitting someone whose band has just won a huge contest.

Angie gently shakes herself loose from Jesse and turns to French, who is smiling, dumbstruck, nodding his head.

“Dude, I know, right?” Angie says to him.

“This is crazy,” he agrees.

“We’re going to get to go to a _real recording studio!”_ says Buck triumphantly.

Angie looks over to Derek Combs, who is almost finished congratulating the other bands on a show well played. The house lights of the auditorium glint off of his aviator shades and the rivets of his leather jacket, and she’s suddenly struck with a bone-deep sense of intimidation.

“Yeah…” she says. “Guys, remember how nervous we were, like, an hour ago?”

“Um, yeah,” says Steve. “But we did it! We won, we kicked those other bands’ asses.”

Angie nods. “I mean, true,” she says, “and like, I _hoped_ we would win, but to be honest, I didn’t _think_ we would, and now…” She doesn’t know how to say what she’s trying to say. The rest of the band stares at her expectantly, waiting for her to finish, but before she can find the right words she feels a large hand clapped jocularly onto her back. Derek Combs has come around to their little huddle, smiling a big famous-looking smile. Angie can’t tell if it quite reaches his eyes, because of the sunglasses.  

“This the winner’s circle? Mazel, mazel,” he says, shaking each of their hands in turn.

“Thank you so much,” says Buck gratefully. “I can’t tell you how excited we are to be—”

“Ah, save it, kid,” Combs says, toeing the line between patronizing and genial. Angie instinctually tenses up, ready as always defend Buck against any hint of insensitivity, but Combs’ tone seems modulated solely by an innocent sense of adult superiority.

“Really,” French adds. “Thank you.”

Combs nods. “My pleasure. I’ll see y’all at the stu this weekend, yeah? My assistant will hit you with the deets.” And with that, he gives a rakish salute and dips towards the door of the auditorium.

“...Who’s Stu?” Jesse murmurs, as they watch him leave.

Steve elbows him. “The _recording studio,_ dumbass.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

***

Together Sound Studio is a massive building, a former church on Detroit’s West Side converted into a recording facility and painted completely black. It looms up out of an otherwise desolate block with such contrast that it could be computer-generated, a dark glitch in the fabric of urban reality.

Angie parks her dad’s old Volvo station wagon in the lot around back and the band members all clamber out, clutching their various instrument cases. Except for Jesse, who doesn’t have a case for his bass, and instead precariously grips it by the neck as they enter the studio— something that embarrasses Angie in a way she’s almost mad at herself for. She knows very well that if she snaps at him that he should’ve gotten a case like she’d told him to _ages_ ago he’ll get all defensive and pissy and it’ll ruin the vibe for the session, but what is Derek Combs going to think when he walks in holding the bass like that? That they’re unprofessional, unworthy, a bunch of loser kids from a loser suburb? Angie is hyper-conscious of everyone they pass by in the building, worrying all the while that her band is being judged on the basis of their least equipped member.

To Angie’s mild relief, Combs isn’t present in the spacious Studio B when they’re ushered in by a bespectacled intern. The intern directs them to set up their gear, pointing out the amps lining the walls of the live room that are available to use, and propping open the door to a drum closet so Buck can retrieve whatever hardware he needs.

Once they’re finished setting up, and Combs still hasn’t come to greet them, they wander into the control room visible through the glass-paned window of the live room. A huge Neve console spans the length of the room, facing the glass, and luxurious leather couches and armchairs are arranged in a lounge-like configuration in the center of the room.

“Whoa,” says French, upon glimpsing a wall lined with band posters and album covers. “Are these all albums he’s worked on?”

“Oh man,” Steve says, scanning the display. “Look, Protomartyr! And Pity Sex!”

“La Dispute, too,” says Jesse, reverently. “This is like, ground zero of Michigan punk rock.”

From the door to the control room booms a voice: “I got Fred Smith’s old guitar in Studio A, if you wanna touch it when you’re done.”

Jesse spins around in time to see Derek Combs, man of the hour, entering from the hallway. He’s wearing sunglasses indoors again, and a slightly different, slightly more expensive-looking leather jacket.

He motions for the band to sit down in the central lounge area of the control room, while he takes a seat in the plush swivel chair at the fore of the console, turning it to face them.

“Now, I do this every year, but I gotta say I’m more excited about you guys that I’ve been about any of the other contest winners,” Combs says.

“You’re serious?” Steve says. “You don’t just, you know, say that to every band?”

Combs smiles. “Question everything, kid, I get it, but I’m not kidding. I really think you’ve got something here.”

He points at Angie now. “You wrote the songs? The first two, the originals.”

Angie swallows, as if it’s a question she doesn’t know the answer to. But of course she does: “Yeah,” she says. “I do all the lyrics and the melodies. Then we write the arrangements together as a band.”

Combs nods. “OK,” he says. “So, which one are you gonna record?”

Everyone immediately looks at Angie.

Oh.

She starts to sweat, heat rising from somewhere deep within. How had they not discussed over the past week since the contest _which_ of their two original songs they were going to record and release? It seems obvious in hindsight to Angie that this is a huge decision, probably the second-biggest decision they’d ever have to make as a new band, right behind deciding to enter the battle of the bands in the first place. The fact that they could’ve been spending the week debating this and coming to a reasoned conclusion but, in actuality, did _not,_ seems like a massive oversight on the part of Angie as responsible bandleader.

“Um,” she says.

“There’s only two, Ange,” says Steve.

“I know that,” she says. “Shut up, I’m thinking.”

She screws her eyes shut, willing the decision-making parts of her brain to leap into action. She wishes she’d taken her Adderall. This is taking way too long. _Just fucking pick, Angie, what is your problem!_ she yells at herself.

“We should do ‘For You Only,’” says Steve. Angie opens her eyes, gives him a look. Now that he’s come right out and said it, she realizes that she vehemently disagrees.

“I don’t know, Steve,” she says. “We should do ‘Underground.’ It was the first song I wrote, it should be the first one we record.” Yeah, that makes sense.

Steve’s brows knit together, that implacable stubbornness of his threatening to rear its head.

“Yeah, but I like ‘For You Only’ more. It has… more of a vibe, you know. I just think—”

“Steve, really, you’re such a narcissist,” Angie says. “You can just come out and say that you desperately want the first song we put out to be the one about how much I _loooooove_ you.”

Steve bristles. “I mean— what is it, do you _not_ want people to know? Are you embarrassed by me? If I hadn’t—”

He breaks off, seeming to realize only then that he’s surrounded by his bandmates and one of the most important producers in the city. He flushes that deep red that, were they alone, would trigger a barrage of jokes from Angie about how fucking white he is, and then looks down and away, running a hand through his hair.

“Yeah. Sure,” he mumbles. “Okay. Let’s do ‘Underground.’”

Combs claps his hands with satisfaction. “Great decision making there, y’all,” he says. “Now— we’ve got six hours to record one song. And I don’t know if any of you kids have been in a studio before, but these things take much, _much_ longer than you think they’re gonna take…”

The band breaks into what feels like a communal cold sweat. Angie remembers that sneak second wave of nervousness that had hit her immediately after they’d won; realizes that it had never really gone away—

She swallows hard, and gives Combs a double thumbs up that she almost immediately regrets. _A fucking_ _thumbs-up, Angie? What are you, five years old?_

Steve saves her, as he so often does. “We got this, man,” he says to Combs. “We’re total pros.”

Angie rolls her eyes at Steve, but tries to do it in a way that says, _okay, you can stay._

“Well, then,” says Combs, looking around at the assembled group, “seems like you’re ready to get started. What are y’all still doing in here? Let’s rock!”

So they rock.

***

They’re all hanging out at Angie’s after school on a Friday when the final master comes in from Combs’ engineer. It’s good timing, because Buck has just finished designing the cover art for the single. He spins his laptop around to face Angie, who has her remedial Physics homework spread out chaotically all over the coffee table.

“Whoa,” she says. “That’s amazing.”

“I know you wanted to use one of the photos where you can see all our faces,” Buck says, “but I just thought the hands looked really cool, like kind of a symbolic thing…”

“No... no, it’s perfect!” Angie says. She’s about to yell for the other guys to come check it out, but Jesse shouts first, from the kitchen table where he’s supposed to be studying for his English final.

“I got the track!” he hollers jubilantly.

The rest of the crew gathers quickly around the table, and Jesse presses play on the master file. The growl of the tweaked and tuned and professionally mixed “Underground” fills the air, sounding incredible even through the shitty laptop speakers. Buck’s eyes flutter closed as he bobs his head; Steve grins when he hears his solo come in loud and clear.

“Let’s release it _right now,”_ Steve says as soon as the song finishes, his eyes sparking manically.

Everyone else turns to Angie. She gulps.

“Umm… I mean. I _guess_ we could….”

Jesse tabs quickly over to another page in his browser, points excitedly. “Look, I have the Bandcamp all set up and ready to go!”

Angie feels the pressure mounting in the room. If she says yes, if she agrees to release the song _right now—_ the music won’t be her secret anymore, won’t be something she shares solely with the people sitting around this table. And it’s not as if she has a problem with self-exposure— she’s still the same girl she was a year ago, when she got a two-week in-school suspension for flashing her boobs during a pep rally— but this is _different,_ it’s special, it’s not the inflammatory Instagram story or the graffiti scrawled across the second-floor girl’s bathroom mirror or any of the other dozens of ways she’s tried to get people to _see_ her, to _listen_ to her over the years. This is her voice, her melodies, her lyrics; it’s the terrifying absence of the barrier of protective irony that she’s lived behind for so long.

There’s another sensation too, alongside the pressure of her bandmates’ eyes on her: a sense of rapidly decreasing distance between her and something she barely knows the shape of, something huge and vital and important. It’s coming closer, she can tell. Right now she is in control, she is at the wheel, but this hard-won level of self-determination is as fragile as an iPhone without a case. And when whatever it is that’s coming has come, has broken like a wave over her, over them all— things will _change_. She’s blissfully blind to what those changes could be, but once she lets the noise inside of her out, the echoes will bounce back, outline the future for her, even if she doesn’t want to know.

Angie takes a deep breath. She looks at Steve— this boy, this beautiful bowlegged boy, whose unshakable confidence in her had been the fire to her fuse, a strange blessing bestowed by the universe when she needed it the most. From the very first day they met, he had looked at her as though she was already a rock star. _His_ rock star.  

“Yeah,” she says, “okay. [Let’s do it. Let’s release the fucking song. Right now.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPJPSEtIb24)

 

***

Jesse comes home from Angie’s house that night to find Allie blasting “Underground” on the living room speaker system. It’s unexpectedly intoxicating, hearing his own bass rattling the rickety old shelving in the same way that Foo Fighters or Queens Of The Stone Age used to back in middle school. It feels unreal; it feels like a dream; it feels _good._

“Dude, this song is _sick,_ ” says Allie. “What the fuck! I can’t believe _this_ is what you’ve been staying out every night doing. Now I’m mad I missed you guys at the battle of the bands, I would have been rocking _out._ Man, you have been holding back!”

Jesse smiles, hardly daring to take this validation at face-value, but his sister’s expression of pride is unmistakably earnest.

“Hey, thanks,” he says, sitting down next to her as the song’s final chorus fades out. “Yeah, I’m pretty proud of it, I guess.”

She jostles him playfully with one hand as she unmutes _Rick & Morty _ on the TV with the other. “I’m proud of _you_. And your little band of freaks. I’m about to send this hot fire to all of my music friends.”  

Jesse nods gratefully, and leans back to watch the show, but after a few minutes he gets antsy sitting there on the couch, so he gets back up and heads across the hall to his room. It’s a mess, as usual: crusty takeout containers and soda cans everywhere, laundry basket overflowing with clothes he’s not sure are dirty or clean. His drawings cover the walls, flowing over and around his bedframe and desk, acting as backdrop to the sacred corner that holds his bass and amp.

He drops down onto his bed, still restless, but not wanting to give into the sneaking compulsion to get high. He feels like he’s in limbo, in some sort of holding pattern, as the song percolates out into the universe, slowly, drop by drop.

There’s a poster of Kurt Cobain on his wall that’s been there for years, ever since he discovered Nirvana in the months after his mom’s death. He stares at it, wondering if the feelings he’s feeling now are the same ones that Kurt felt on the eve of the release of _his_ first song. There has to be some kind of parallel in the psychology, he thinks, some kind of shared insanity between everyone who has ever voluntarily gotten themselves tied up in the world of music.

These past few weeks, and tonight more than ever, he is finding it so very hard to think about the next day— about what time he’ll get up, what he’ll eat for breakfast, if he’ll actually manage to get any homework done— but somehow so easy to imagine a future where little kids with dead moms have posters of _him_ on their walls, where they talk about him in the past tense in hushed tones of reverence, using phrases like “gone too soon” and “an inspiration.”

Until he’d joined the band, Jesse had barely bothered to make plans for his life past high school. And now that the barest preview of a future is wavering before his eyes like a mirage in the desert, ringing in his ears like the squeal of feedback before the song actually begins, he finds himself preparing for a sprint, rather than a marathon.

With the fierce conviction of the newly-eighteen, Jesse plots himself a course by the basis of its endpoint: if he is to become legendary, he must burn as brightly as possible, before it all goes dark. It’ll be worth it.

***

After that night, it all happens so fast.

One of Allie’s “music friends” just so happens to be a freelance writer at a small Midwest music blog, who the very next day posts a short but wildly enthusiastic review of the track. He also posts the link to the review on his Twitter, where it catches the attention of a writer for a slightly more prestigious national blog. She retweets it, and then writes her own review, where she calls “Underground” a “stunning debut entry into the pop-punk canon by a dangerously precocious new band.”

The group text (titled, this week, “THE FIFTH POO-VEMENT,” courtesy of Steve) spills over into chaos. All day, it seems like every hour there’s a new tweet or article to freak out over. Get Alternative, Chorus.fm, The Fader, The Grey Estates, even Stereogum are posting about the song. The frenzy continues for hours and hours and into the following day; someone links Angie to a video of the Battle of the Bands performance that she hadn’t even known was _recorded_ , let alone uploaded, but now its views are increasing by the thousands as comments stack up below it:

  * _THIS BAND FUCKS_
  * _Wowwwww so sick!_
  * _These guys are high schoolers? No freakin way._
  * _we have decided to stan forever_
  * _come to Brazil!!!!!!!!_



Steve gets a text from his cousin at college in Texas, who tells him that all of his indie-alt hipster friends are obsessing over the song, and that he got a big boost to his clout when he was able to brag that that was his _cousin_ on lead guitar, thank you very much.  

Jesse had been the one to set up all of the social media and email stuff, on the day that they had decided to become a band and picked out a name, so it’s his laptop and phone that are bearing witness to the barrage of incoming followers, @-replies, tags, and message requests. Their first and only original tweet yesterday had been a link to the song on Bandcamp, which now had over 75 retweets, but after retweeting as many blog review links as he can find in their mentions, Jesse decides to start joking around with their 384 followers and counting.

_@TheFifthMovementMI  
_ _Sup bitches i hear you like our song. This is jesse (bass) btw. Tweet me your favorite lyric and I’ll tell angie she has bad grammar_

_@davidjen99  
_ _@TheFifthMovementMI such a sick track guys. “Break down the bones of our keepers” — so metal, what does it mean?_

_@TheFifthMovementMI  
_ _@davidjen99 it means angie needed to pee but i was taking a shit and she almost kicked down the door_

***

Two days after the song drops, on Sunday, Angie is at Meijer with her mother, to whom she’s been consistently downplaying this whole “band” thing. She’s scared to disturb the fragile peace she’d recently brokered between them at the apparent “resolution” of some of her more advanced “behavioral issues,” as of last semester— too scared to confess that the reason she wasn’t getting dropped off back at the Ortenberg house at 2 AM by the police anymore was because she’d traded illegally loitering in parking lots, drunk, for illegally practicing rock songs in an unfinished house, stoned.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket as they march down the frozen foods aisle, and she thinks it’s gotta be another text in the group chat, but then it _keeps_ buzzing and she realizes it’s _ringing._ Pulling it out of her pocket and seeing it’s Steve, she picks up immediately.

“What is it? I’m with my mom—”

“Ange, we got a _Pitchfork review!”_

Angie stops walking. “ _What?!”_ she hisses, trying not to draw her mom’s attention. “Stop it. You’re fucking with me.”

“I’m not _,_ I’m _not_ , Angie, and they _liked_ it! Pitchfork liked our song! ”

“Holy shit, what did they—”

But before she can get the lowdown, her phone starts ringing _again._ She pulls it away from her ear, reads the name, and says to Steve: “Hold on. Hold on just a sec. Jesse is calling me.”

She swaps the calls. “Jesse?”

“Angie, I just got an email— you know the Pendulums, from Seattle?”

“What? Yeah, of course, they’re fucking sick.”

“Mimi, their lead singer, emailed us, just now. And….” His voice grows low, incredulous.

“And _what?”_

“They want to take us on tour, to open for them. Four West Coast dates in June. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.”

Angie absolutely cannot possibly be expected to keep it together. She forgets she’s in public, she forgets her mom is less than five feet away and she shrieks, “ _Holy shit!”_ surrounded by Lean Cuisines.

“Angelica!” Her mom is practically on top of her in an instant, waving in her face. “What is _wrong_ with you? We are in a _grocery store!_ ”

Angie drops her phone to her side. Jesse is going _“Angie? Angie, you there?”_ through the speaker. She looks up at her mom, sheepish, shrugging.

“So… I’m going on tour with my band this summer,” she says, by way of explanation. “To California.”  

Her mom folds her arms. “Uh huh,” she says. “Right. We’ll see what your father has to say about that.”

Of course. It can never just be easy, can it?  

***

Angie sits down with her parents that night. Summoning up every single drop of goodwill she’s built up over this recent detention-less period, as well as every half-remembered persuasive public speaking lesson from English class, she makes the case that a two-week trip out to the West Coast with her band the summer before her senior year would be a high-quality life experience, one that would let her see this beautiful country up close, and also provide _lots_ of great inspirational material for her college applications.

To her father she argues that it’s a business opportunity, trying to couch her desperate pleas in the dour language of investments and transactions that he spends his days speaking in. She shows him the band’s PayPal account, $257 richer than it was a week ago thanks to people purchasing the song on Bandcamp at a buck a pop.

“And that’s not even counting the money we’ll be getting from streams on Spotify and stuff,” she says. “We’ll be making money each night on the road from tickets and from merch, too, and we might even meet someone out there that could sign us to a record label, and pay upfront for us to record new songs.” She knows this is wildly unlikely, bands have to work for months, _years_ to get _noticed_ by labels, let alone signed, but she cannily figures that if her dad perceives this creative quest as a show of entrepreneurial spirit in his only daughter, his pride will overwhelm his sense of practicality.

“Alright,” says her father, arms folded. “I’m going to discuss this with your mother tonight. I appreciate the… effort you’ve put into this.”

“Although I don’t understand why you can’t work this hard on school,” her mother says pointedly. “You obviously have it in you to _try,_ honey.”

Angie resists the urge to snark back at her. “Please,” she says instead, “please let me go. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

And that’s not quite true, not exactly— this time, last year, the thought of going on tour with a band, with _her band,_ would have been as foreign to her as the thought of getting an A+ in history class. But _now,_ now it’s different, and it _is_ everything she wants, and has been from the moment she stepped out on stage at the Battle of the Bands.

***

The next day at school, Steve catches French in the hall, head down, practically glowering at the tiled floor as he heads to some AP class or another.

“Dude, what is wrong with you? You should be freaking _out._ We’re gonna go rock in motherfucking California!” Steve says, dragging French to an untrafficked side corner of the hallway.

French’s expression is unreadable. “I know we try not to talk about school stuff at band practice,” he says, “but in case you forgot, I’m going to U of M this fall with a full ride. And I’m already signed up for a residential summer prep intensive in Ann Arbor that starts on June 17th.”

“June 17th?” Steve says. “But that’s—”

“The day we’d be playing in Seattle, I know. I fucking know, dude, but I can’t just—”

“You’re really gonna choose _college prep_ over hitting the road with your _band?_ I know you’re a nerd, but this is insane. You’re basically _quitting.”_

“It’s not that black-and-white— I can still practice and play with you guys here in town, but—”

Steve’s jaw sets, that trademark high-temperature Winchellian intensity striking out deep and direct towards French. “And you were gonna tell Angie this _when,_ exactly?”

French shakes his head. “I don’t know. Today, I guess. Later.”

“Fuck that,” Steve says. “She needs you. We _all_ need you. I’m not going to learn your parts, dude, don’t think you can dump them on me. Just because you’re the only one of us who _already_ had an exit route out of this graveyard of a town doesn’t mean you can leave us in the dust as soon as _we’ve_ got the chance to get out, too.”  

French looks Steve in the eye for just a second before turning away, unable to bear the heat of his fellow guitarist’s accusatory glare.

“I’ve gotta get to class. Sorry,” he says, and pushes past Steve back into the crowded current of the hallway.

And Steve is left standing there, and as soon as French disappears around the corner he finds his outrage quickly replaced by a deep unsettled dread. It’s not that they wouldn’t go on tour, if French couldn’t come— they probably would. But it wouldn’t be the same; not the music, not the vibe— the Fifth Movement are _five,_ if one is gone then it isn’t the same band, not at all, not even close.  

***

Buck is making the rounds at the end-of-year jazz band party after school when his phone buzzes with a text from French. _Can we talk? About this tour thing. I need to vent. Steve doesn’t get it._

_Meet me at my house,_ Buck texts back, _leaving party now. I’ll be there in 15._

***

They sit down in Buck’s bedroom, French taking the chair by the desk like he usually does, Buck on his bed leaning against the wall.

“So you’re definitely going?”

Buck nods. “My parents were like, weirdly down for it. I think my mom is using it as some kind of win over my dad— he thought drumming was a stupid idea, he wanted to have me take vocal lessons instead. She convinced him to let me drum, but he still always thought I should’ve been a singer...”

“And now look at you,” French says.

“Yeah, I guess it paid off. Thanks, Mom.”

Buck waits for French to speak, but he doesn’t. Buck can tell how tightly wound he is, how ready to explode he is under the pressure of his own expectations. The tension in his temples, the resistance in his wrists— the only time Buck ever sees him loosen up these days is during band practice, or onstage, or in the studio, when he’s got his guitar in his hands and he’s letting the music free from inside him.

“French, I really— I think you should come. On tour. With us. I _want_ you to come,” Buck says, trying his best not to sound needy, but not sure if he’s managing it.

French’s face folds into a look of pained despair.

“If I go, I could screw it all up. Everything I’ve planned— My future, my _brothers’_ future…”

He looks at Buck, who doesn’t speak, but instead holds him in a steady gaze. A deep and intimate trust emanates from Buck, one that French isn’t sure at all that he’s worthy of.

“How do you do it?” French continues, his voice a low murmur. “How are you able to be so _sure_ that this is a chance that you want to take? That this is the life you want?”

Buck casts his eyes down now, smiles a sad smile. “It’s easy for me,” he says. “I’d rather be anywhere other than here. There’s literally nothing holding me back.”

He shifts in his seat; it seems for a moment as though he’s about to reach out for French, and French finds himself subconsciously preparing to receive him, but instead he just wraps his arms around his chest, sinks in deeper into his slouch.

“Oh. Yeah,” French says. And he thinks of Buck’s hands flying across the drum kit, expertly picking out the solid rhythm that the rest of them depend on so deeply to keep them in time, to make themselves heard, to be something, _anything_ other than the dead-end teenagers the rest of the world so easily believes them to be—

French says, “I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if I let myself hold you— hold _us_ back. Not now. Not when we’re so close to… _something._ ”

Buck forces himself to ask, to make sure: “...So you’ll come?”

French takes off his glasses, presses his palms into his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I will. Fuck.”

Buck’s eyes brighten, and he nods. “French, you’re a fucking genius, you know that,” he says. “There will always be a place for you at conferences, camps, colleges, _whatever._ I promise going on tour with us won’t make you catch our stupid.”

French lets loose a graceful laugh, breaking through the tension that had slowly built up, and he tries not to stare at Buck as the smaller boy practically reinflates himself with relief, his face gaining back the color it’d lost when he’d thought there was a chance French might not be coming with them.

_I’m doing this for you,_ is what French doesn’t say out loud. _Not for Angie, not for Steve, not for me, even. For you only, Buck._

***

During the last few weeks of the semester, the band’s regular study sessions at Angie’s begin to involuntarily transform into tour planning meetings. They start a million different Google Docs; they look up the best overland driving routes to the West Coast from Michigan; they start figuring out where they’ll be sleeping on the road.

“Well, we’re definitely staying with my grandma in Los Angeles,” says Angie.

“And my best friend from camp would probably host us in Portland,” Buck adds. “I visited last summer, they have an awesome house.”

“Seattle, that’s where my aunt lives,” Steve says. “Anyone got family or friends in San Francisco?”

Everyone is silent.

Jesse pulls up Twitter on his phone. “Here,” he says, “I’m going to tweet out a request, on the band account. _Need a place to stay in SF on tour with @ThePendulums this summer!!!! Hit us up. If u have floor we will sleep.”_

“Oh man,” says Angie, sinking into a half-daydream. “San Francisco, that’s like, Silicon Valley, yeah? I really hope there’s some rich tech guy there who just happens to be a _huge_ fan, and he sees that tweet and invites us to stay in his hillside mansion, with a pool… And he’s _hot,_ like with a beard—”

She’s fully prepared to keep going, shooting mischievous glances at Steve, who reaches a hand over and literally puts it over her mouth to shut her up. She fights him off, giggling, biting at him, half-shrieking through his fingers: “Raise your hand if you think Steve wants to get cucked by a tech bro!”

Buck is laughing so hard he’s wheezing. Jesse raises a hand; Steve lets go of Angie only to slap it down.

“We’re gonna kill each other on the road,” mutters French.

“Or,” says Angie, “consider this, we’ll have the best stage banter of all time.”

***

The email comes in to the band inbox a few hours later, once everyone has gone home.

 

_To:_ [ _thefifthmovementmi@gmail.com_ ](mailto:thefifthmovementmi@gmail.com)

_From:_ [ _bbroderickalle@sfusd.edu_ ](mailto:bbroderickalle@sfusd.edu)

_Hi Fifth Movement,_

_I love your song, “Underground.” It’s not the kind of music I normally listen to these days. If you saw me, you would never think I’d be a fan. But the other day, while walking home from work, I passed a record store that was playing it. I just had to stop and go in and ask the name of the band, and they told me, so I went home and bought it on iTunes._

_The lyrics are so beautiful. I’ve played it over and over, and every time I find something new I like about it. And your other song, that you have in the video from the Battle of the Bands, is beautiful too. If I could figure out how to take it from YouTube and put it into my iTunes, I would, but I’m pretty old, so those things give me trouble. Will you be releasing it soon?_

_I don’t have a Twitter, but I check yours, so I saw what you said about needing somewhere to stay in San Francisco. I live here in the city. I’m a high school teacher, and I’ve lived in the same rent-controlled apartment for 20 years, so it’s a bit bigger than you would expect.... It can get lonely sometimes. I would love to host you all when you come here to play._

_I promise I’m not crazy :) Just a big fan._

_Love,  
_ _Betty Broderick-Allen_

***

Steve, French, and Jesse walk at graduation three days before they head out for tour. Buck and Angie sit in the bleachers, whooping as their friends’ names are called, even though Principal Gilchrist had politely asked everyone to refrain from applause after each name, and save their cheers for the very end. _Yeah, right._

They all reunite after the ceremony, standing on the damp ground of the football field among the milling crowd. Angie fakes Steve out by going in for a high-five and then, seeing his confused face, nearly tackling him with a congratulatory kiss. She hugs French as well, gratefully, proudly.

Jesse comes her way and she’s ready; she hands him the grocery bag she’d been carrying, which has something boxed up inside.

“I got you something,” she says. “As a graduation gift. Sorry I didn’t wrap it all nice, I’m really lazy. And FYI, I got Steve and French stuff too, I’m just giving it to them later because it hasn’t come in from Amazon yet. So. Here.”

She thrusts the bag into Jesse’s hands. He looks at her, slightly bemused, and then tears into the bag and box until its contents are revealed:

“Angie, stop, you did _not—_ ”

Steve leans over, sees what Jesse has in his hands: “Oh my god, _finally!_ ” He shouts over to French: “Dude! Jesse’s got a _bass case_ now!”

***

They rent a trailer from the U-Haul in downtown Crestwood and hook it to the back of the Volvo, loading it full of amps, drums, instruments, and suitcases. Angie’s dad makes them go out to the closed-down Home Depot’s empty parking lot and practice 3-point turns with the loaded trailer, grading them on criteria including speed, accuracy, and confidence.

On the morning of their departure they gather in the Ortenbergs’ driveway: Angie and Angie’s parents and brother, Steve and Steve’s parents, Buck and Buck’s parents, Jesse and Jesse’s sister, and French.

Seeing him standing alone, Buck grabs French and drags him over. Buck’s parents fawn over French and his academic accomplishments, which of course they're fully versed on.

Steve catches Buck’s eye, nods to him, a quick gesture that says _thank you for keeping an eye on him._ That is what this’ll be, then, Buck knows— all of them, together, keeping each other alive and breathing, keeping each other in tune.

***

The trip out to Seattle takes three days, driving almost nonstop from morning to night. The first day, they take I-94 out of Michigan and pass through Chicago, going north through Wisconsin. They spend the first night in a motel on the outskirts of Minneapolis, jittery and excited to be actually, literally, finally _on the road._

On the second day, there’s some kind of accident on I-94 in North Dakota, near Bismarck. All of the westbound lanes are blocked off, so Angie’s Google Maps shuttles them off the highway onto a rural side road.

They drive slowly through endless fields, the road empty of other cars save the occasional pickup truck. Without the roar of the highway around them, giving context to their journey, they could be in the past, or the future, or another world altogether.

“It’s so beautiful,” Buck breathes, as they pass through yet another verdant acre. “Can we stop and take some pictures?”

“Hell yes,” says Angie. “Let’s grab some grams.”

Angie slows the Volvo to a halt on the shoulder of the road. The field they’ve stopped in front of is overgrown with green grasses; darker green hills covered in trees rise up to the north. Broken wooden fence-posts climb a hill to the west, remnants of some bygone industry.  

Everyone gets out of the car, gazing up around them in awe at the fertile landscape. Without the chug of the car engine, they can hear crickets and cicadas singing from all directions.

“Does this place feel kinda Twilight Zone-y to anyone else?” Angie asks, after Buck has snapped a couple shots of her posing artistically with Steve against a stand of tall grasses. “Like, _Stalker_ vibes. Aliens are about to descend upon us!” She wiggles her hands, in the universal shorthand for “spooky.”

Jesse turns, faces away from the road, towards the field. “Yeah, I feel like something weird happened here,” he says. “Or… like something weird _could_ happen.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Steve scoffs. “This is abduction ground zero. Prepare your buttholes, everyone!”

“Ugh!” Angie swats at Steve fondly.

Buck trades the camera to Angie now to get some shots of him and French, but Jesse remains out of the way, gazing out into the field. He knows Angie was mostly joking, but the idyll of the area had been spoiled for him as soon as she’d verbalized her apprehension. A shudder runs down his spine— there is something truly freaking him out now about this field, about the sun beating down ceaselessly onto the grass amidst the gentle hum of the crickets. He’s grateful when Angie herds them all back into the car, and even more grateful when Google Maps navigates them back onto the comfortingly mundane I-94.

They sleep that night in Bozeman, at a cheap Red Roof Inn. Just like the previous night, Angie and Steve take one bed, Buck and French take the other, and Jesse sprawls out on the cot by the door.

In the middle of the night, Angie wakes up to go to the bathroom. Coming back to bed, she looks around at her sleeping bandmates. The harsh halogen glare of the parking lot lights is filtering in through the inadequate blinds of the room, casting faces in otherworldly shades and patterns of orange and amber.

French looks so young without his glasses, his face freed of the tautness that tortures it so often during the daytime. Buck has curled himself tightly around French in his sleep, an arm thrown around the older boy’s stomach like a life preserver. Angie wonders whether they’ll remember this when they wake up, remember how during the night they laid so close. Maybe at this very moment, the touch they share is transmuting itself into dreams, and it’ll only be the dreams they remember. They’ll wake up, each thinking that the warmth they felt while lying asleep was just a dream of desire, and not something real, something true, skin against skin just hours before.

She slips back under the covers, brushes up against Steve. He mutters something adorably incomprehensible, and she smiles, and soon she is drifting back off to sleep, her arms around him.

***

The first show with the Pendulums in Seattle, at the Vera Project, is sold out. So is the second show in Portland at Holocene. After their weeks of preparation, all those days of planning and packing and promoting and practicing, it’s crazy to actually be up there, on that stage, playing to the crowd. The Pendulums’ fans are hugely receptive, cheering after every song, even though most (if not all) are totally unknown to them. Angie is energized enough by the second night of tour to break out her Karen O routine, thrashing around with abandon, licking the microphone, even grinding on Steve during his “Invisible Self” solo. During the last song, she does something she’s always wanted to do— she takes a water bottle and sprays it all over the audience before emptying it on herself, soaking her hair and her shirt, letting her makeup drip down her face in geologic patterns of black and green. It feels fucking _incredible._  

The San Francisco show at Rickshaw Stop sells out day of, and a line out the door has formed by the time they get back to the venue from dinner.

Jesse is the one to spot the larger, older woman about six or seven people back from the front of the line. “Hey, it’s Betty! The lady we’re staying with tonight!” he says to the others, pointing her out as they approach.

She’s tall, wearing some kind of floral muumuu, with beaded necklaces draped over it in layers of texture. Her bag is leather fringe dotted with turquoise, and she has huge, dangly golden earrings— the very model of an aging San Francisco hippie. Angie can practically already smell the potpourri her sleeping bag will end up smelling like for the rest of the tour after their stay tonight.

The band goes up to Betty, and she immediately breaks out into a grin when she recognizes them.

“Oh— hi,” she says. “Wow, it’s crazy to see you guys in person, after listening to your song on my own so many times…”

Steve says, “Just wait until you see us play. Your life is gonna change!”

“It’s gonna get loud,” Buck supplies, justifiably concerned about the potential physical impact of their live show on a person of such relatively advanced age to the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t worry about me,” Betty says, holding up a small white container. “I brought earplugs! It may have been a while since I’ve been to a club, but I do know how these things can get.”

“Amazing,” says Angie. “You know, I think you’re the first person to come to one of these shows just for us. So… thank you.”

Betty blushes. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

***

After the show, the band follows Betty in the Volvo to her apartment in the Mission. Despite their protests she lets them use her parking space, and goes out to find street parking for the night. When she gets back they’re setting up their sleeping bags in her living room, which, as promised, is far more spacious than they would’ve expected for a high school teacher in San Francisco.

It’s really late but they’re not tired; Betty doesn’t seem to be either, as she bustles around the kitchen making them all cups of Celestia Seasonings Sleepytime tea.

Angie is circling the room, admiring the art that lines the walls. “Wow, I love this one,” she says, pointing to a large psychedelic print, featuring a woman’s face composed of beautifully unreadable type in pink and blue.

Betty glances over her shoulder to see which one Angie is looking at. “Oh, that’s an original Wes Wilson,” she says casually. “Probably worth a few dozen grand at this point, but it cost me two dollars in 1967.”

“1967?” Jesse says. “That was the Summer of Love. You were _here?”_

Betty walks over to him, hands him his cup of tea. “Oh, you bet,” she says. “I was sixteen. I came up from Santa Barbara with my brother— it was just like heaven. We slept in the parks, and listened to music all day… You could trade anything for anything, you didn’t even need money.”

She sits down in one of the plush armchairs by the window, a dreamy look in her eyes.  

“I would’ve stayed here forever... but I had to go back to Santa Barbara after the summer was over, and finish high school. The second I graduated, though, I moved here for college and have hardly ever left since.”

“It’s a beautiful city,” says Steve, though he’s barely seen more than a few blocks of it since driving in this morning. It just feels like the right thing to say.

“Yeah,” Betty says. “It’s seen a lot. So much music, so much change…”

She looks to the window, where the lights of the city have arranged themselves in nocturnal splendor. “But it’s lost something, I really think it has. I’d never leave, not now, not after…. I mean, there’s nowhere else for me. There never was.”

She turns back to the band now, who gaze up respectfully at her from their positions around the room.

“Hold on to it,” she says to them. “Hold on to that thing that makes you special, that makes you _you._ Never let it go. Never let it get sucked out of you by money, by promises… This city breaks my heart, the way it’s been broken. When I see you playing your songs, I see the way this place was when I fell in love with it… That fire, that energy. There will be people who want to take it for their own, capture it, there always are. Just don’t let them.”

“We won’t, Betty,” says Steve.

“Yeah,” says Angie. “We’ll _never_ be sellouts.”

“Let’s drink to that!” says French, and they all raise their mugs of tea.

***

Everyone eventually settles down into their sleeping bags, the lights of phone screens clicking off one by one. Except for Jesse, who’s still curled up in an armchair, scrolling through nothing in particular.

Betty comes past him, making her last round before she heads to bed, collecting the empty mugs from around the room.

“You must be a great teacher,” says Jesse quietly to her.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Betty says.

“I’m serious,” Jesse says. “I had some real shitty teachers. The kind that make you want to stop learning new things forever. But I think… you aren’t like that.”

“I wish my students thought the same way,” she says. “I have... trouble dealing with them. It’s only years later that I get a thank you, once in a while, maybe after one of them graduates college…”

Jesse shakes his head. “Kids are dumb. I would know, I am one.”

“You’re not dumb, Jesse,” Betty says. “None of you are, but especially not you.”

“What, me?” says Jesse. “No, I really don’t know shit about shit, I promise.”

“This might sound a little hippie-dippy of me,” Betty says, “and I know I haven’t known you for long at all… But maybe it’s that you see things a little _too_ well, you see the way that they really are, and so you block yourself off to the world, because otherwise it— it hurts too much. And that makes you _think_ you don’t know anything, but you _do,_ you know better than most...”

Jesse doesn’t say anything. His face is a dark silhouette against the light-polluted sky of the city outside.

“Good night, Jesse,”  says Betty. She turns to go.

“Good night, Betty,” Jesse says, but he’s not sure if she hears him.  

***

They take I-5 down from the Bay through the Central Valley towards Los Angeles, where they’ll have a night off before the sold-out show at the Echo the following day.

A few hours in, their stomachs begin to rumble. Signs for Harris Ranch Restaurant begin popping up on the side of the highway, advertising barbecue and steak. A few miles later, a massive feedlot of black-and-white cows comes into view, stretching out as far as the eye can see. The air inside the car begins to stink unmistakably of manure, which of course sets off a cascade of terrible “who farted” jokes.

Jesse, at the wheel, turns the car into the Harris Ranch parking lot. The band disembarks and heads inside the restaurant, where an array of beef-based items sourced straight from the feedlots visible through the restaurant windows are available for purchase and consumption.

Food in hand, they all head to the outdoor seating area, where thankfully the wind is blowing the cow-scent away from them instead of towards them.

“Hoooooly fucking shit,” says Jesse, as they sit down. “I went to add a location tag to this Instagram story of my sandwich, _do not laugh at me Steve I take food photos very seriously,_ and look what showed up as a name for this place—”

He flips the phone towards the rest of the group and Angie is the first to lean her head in, squinting at the screen, and she reads out:

“... Cowschwitz.” She looks at him, face neutral.

“Like, because of … the cows …. In the … ” Jesse slowly trails off. Everyone is looking at Angie now. Angie Ortenberg, the band’s token Jew …. cruelly decides to wait _just_ one second longer than is comfortable to let out a huge, shrieking laugh.

“That is fucking _amazing,”_ she cackles. “Oh my god! _Cowschwitz,_ holy fuck...” She proceeds to immediately draft Jesse into taking a picture of her and Steve against the backdrop of the grim pasture.

“How offensive do you think I can make this caption without pissing off my parents and also, like, the ghosts of my grandparents?” she laughs, grabbing her phone back from Jesse. “Oh my god— wait, I got it— how about, _cow-ncentration camp?”_

French wanders off down the hill, away from the seating area and Angie’s antics, squinting into the distance, at the horizon unfolding out beyond the highway. Buck trails behind him, pulled along by something unspoken.

“Ugh, it smells so bad,” says Buck, coming up behind French to stand next to him, and wrinkling his nose. “Those poor cows.”

French can’t help but grin at Buck’s screwed-up expression. “I like that face you’re making,” he says.

“Thank you? It’s kind of involuntary.”

“Well, you know I… I like your face… all the time. Not just now.”

French expects Buck to immediately blush, to turn away, to make some kind of excuse or joke, but instead he finds himself being looked at with gentle intensity by the other boy.

“I’m so glad you came, French,” says Buck. “On tour. It would’ve really, _really_ sucked to not have you here— I would have missed you. A lot.”

French thinks about the washed-out cinderblock dorms he was supposed to have been spending this month studying in; pictures the endless horizon of I-90 and the clouds like dreams the sky is having above the plains of Montana; remembers, with sudden clarity, the touch of a hand on his skin in the night, a hand that could only belong to one person—

Back up by the tables and chairs, Steve and Jesse are busy with their sandwiches, so Angie is the only one who sees French and Buck talking, and then not talking, and then with a gentleness of movement like the release of a kite into the clean air, leaning in close and kissing.

She smiles. _Love in the time of… cow-lera?_

***

Los Angeles is dry and hot, the sky cloudless and the palm trees swaying in the late June breeze. Angie feels like she’s in a movie; they take Beverly to get from her grandma’s house in Fairfax to the venue in Echo Park and she is utterly hypnotized by every single Technicolor storefront they pass, every vacant lot and ugly modern apartment block.

The show that night is the last one of tour, and the room is packed out before they even get onstage. This audience seems to be more familiar with the Fifth Movement than the last few nights; or at least it seems like that because a pack of drunken dudes in the front row keep screaming _“Angie, take your shirt off!”_

“I’m seventeen, you fucking pedophiles!” she hollers back during a break between songs, which seems to shut them up well enough.

By the end of the set, Angie is trying hard to not let herself think about how this is the last night of tour, knowing if she does she might get too emotional to sing.

“Thank you so much to the Pendulums for taking us out on our very first tour,” she says. Buck begins to beat the kick drum for the extended intro of their last song while Angie introduces the band.

“We’re The Fifth Movement, we’re from Michigan. I’m Angie. That’s Steve ‘Windchill’ Winchell ripping it up. French Sosa keeping it real. Jesse Mills holding it down. And our baby Buck Vu on the beat. Let’s _go!”_

She shrieks her way through “Rings of Saturn,” and does the thing with the water bottle again, making sure to get the spray all over the obnoxious men in the front row before pouring the rest onto her head and chest.

After they finish, they stumble offstage, sweaty, exhilarated. Angie sways against Steve as they climb the staircase to the green room, gratefully breathing in his adrenaline scent with deep, punk-drunk inhales. His hand is warm and strong around her hip and she’s absently trying to picture the upstairs bathroom in her head, mentally analyzing its angles against some abstract standard of conduciveness-to-fucking.

As they emerge into the attic-like green room, they cross paths with the Pendulums, who are on their way downstairs to jump on for their headline set.

“Killed it, you guys,” says Mimi, the lead singer, high-fiving Angie as she walks past, guitar in hand. “See you at the afterparty!”

Angie can’t believe this is her real life now. Six months ago she was a high school junior with an attitude problem, failing almost every class, practically friendless, with only her record collection and her poetry Tumblr to keep her from falling into total despair. She’d never written a song, never sang on a stage, never had a boyfriend, never seen the ocean. And now she’s in a band _with_ her boyfriend, and some of the greatest people ever, friends she feels like she’s known her entire life, and they’re finishing up a tour that has sent them across the country to play in front of screaming, moshing crowds. And every night up there on that stage she feels so damn _good,_ she feels _home,_ she feels like a goddess, a star, an _angel._ Not an outcast, not a misfit, not anymore, never again. Now she’s that bitch who gets invited to _afterparties!_

After the Pendulums have all gone downstairs, the green room isn’t empty. There’s a man left standing there, someone Angie’s never met. Tall, dark-haired, older by at least twenty-five years than any of the members of the bands on the bill tonight, kind of DILF-y. Angie’s no expert, but the horn-rimmed glasses and the hip chambray shirt are practically _screaming_ “music industry.”

Angie breaks away from Steve as the man approaches her, runs a hand through her damp hair to arrange it in some semblance of professionalism. She’s suddenly very aware of the see-through nature of her soaked shirt.

“Sorry to invade your space like this, the Pendulums let me up,” the man says by way of apology. “I just wanted to make sure I had a chance to talk to you— to you _all,_ before you got swarmed down there.”

He extends a hand to shake, and Angie takes it. His grip is firm, confident.  

“I’m Hunter Percy, from Melanu Management. You can call me Hap, everyone does.”

“Hello, Hap,” Steve says, shaking his hand next.

Hap greets the rest of the band in turn, professional yet enthusiastic. Then he says, “I know you guys are pretty new to the game. But I’ve been in the music industry for over 30 years. My assistant sent me your song a few weeks back and it was like, _whoosh._ Mind blown. I knew I had to come check you out live, just to make sure you were the real deal—”

“And?” Angie raises her eyebrow.

“Yeah, are we?” French asks.

Hap grins incredulously, as though he can’t believe what he’s about to say. “You guys are the _best_ damn live band I’ve seen come through this spot since I saw Sleater-Kinney here in ‘97. They wanted me to manage them, but I turned them down— let me tell you, I still think about that one.”

“No _way,”_ says Angie, glancing around at her bandmates to confirm that they heard what she just heard. They look just as dumbstruck as she feels. “You’re serious?”

“I am very serious,” says Hap, “and I’m serious about this too: I want to be _your_ manager. No, no— you can’t say yes right away!”

“Umm, why not?” Angie laughs. This is like every dream she had about this tour coming true at once. Sold out shows, a management offer— what’s next?

Hap winks at her. “Because, of course, I’ve got to take you all out to dinner first.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Most bands/people/places mentioned are real, except for both Derek Combs and the Pendulums who are merely plot devices.  
> Together Sound is a thinly veiled reference to the very real Assemble Sound studios in Detroit, which is actually in a converted church painted black. 
> 
> This is going to be 4 or 5 chapters so stay tuned :)
> 
> Meanwhile, [here’s my inspiration playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/1227709477/playlist/6gkes882TmMy3vcKEgt1Zp?si=jfmHgUr0QjGbu_j-_D9akw) for T5M’s sound. Heavy on the Paramore, of course, but also inspired big-time by The Beths and Charly Bliss.
> 
> And in case you missed the link earlier, here's "Underground": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPJPSEtIb24


End file.
